Friday, October 28, 2011

Westmount's newest diabolical scheme to keep riff-raff out

Much hilarity nowadays on Landsdowne below the Glen as cars are now forced to wait through several traffic cycles due to the fact that a large portion of the roadway has been recently devoted to cyclists and parking. Mayor Peter Trent wants to inconvenience cars around there because he feels that Westmount has become a "traffic sewer." As you can see, there is a line on the left which is given over to the cyclists barreling downhill. That one seems sufficient. But on the right there is now an additional eight-or-so feet. A councillor named Gary Ikeman told me later that one of those lanes is actually meant for parking. Wesmount was pressured to provide the bike path by the City of Montreal who sought to connect the de Maisonneuve and Lachine Canal bike paths. Westmount has some studies online concerning their own bike paths but nobody knows how many people use this particular path.

The little streets where most people live are still very quiet, it's the larger streets, the feeder, throughfares, not sure what the traffic planners call them, but they have become considerably busier all over. The problem with Westmount is that they are in denial that The Boulevard, St. Catherine and other such streets fall into that category. If you click on that link in the story Mayor Trent seems positively outraged that people would drive through Westmount to get to and from downtown, but that's the price they pay for their excellent positioning near to downtown.

And I agree it will only get worse.

Personally I think about a dozen massive residential towers downtown could help.

I've ridden down the glen numerous times on my bike and that lane scares me. It's often full of junk and crap and gravel and holes. Going uphill is a bit better because you're going slower. it's a good idea but poorly designed and maintained.

Then we have Montreal West's stupid "Devil's Hill" road barrier with Ville St. Pierre, the northern section of Summit Circle in Westmount closed off to all but pedestrians and their (illegally-unleashed) dogs, and Cote St. Luc still "landlocked" due to the now 50-year-old "Cavendish Connection" fiasco, etc., etc., it seems we'll soon be completely mired by "gated communities".

Cavendish Blvd. now runs uninterrupted all the way from Henri Bourassa at Toupin Blvd. to the diversion at Dalton Road. The only remaining roadblock is the long-proposed connection west of Dalton under or over the railway yards into the City of Cote St. Luc, so the pressure can only increase to stop the endless, political bickering and accept the inevitable.

CSL's absurd proposals to divert traffic south and then east from Cavendish onto Royalmount toward Decarie Blvd. are unacceptable.

Cavendish Mall--initially very successful--has steadily been abandoned by retailers because of this ongoing foolishness and evidently CSL's City Hall could care less. Denying its own residents access to convenient shopping and services has to be the height of irresponsibility and the extreme of the "not in my back yard" syndrome and culture of CSL politicians going all the way back to the 1950s.

When the former Blue Bonnets/Hippodrome property is developed, it is likely that Jean Talon will link up with Mackle Road, thus relieving another pressure point.

If east end routes such as Viau and Lacordaire have proven to be successful in aesthetically linking up residential and commercial neighbourhoods on both sides of Metropolitain Blvd., then Cavendish Blvd. can succeed equally as well. CSL's current obstinate attitude cannot, indeed will not prevail for much longer.

The half-baked notion of extending Cote St. Luc Road westward into Lachine presumably at Norman Road to link up with Highway 20 is highly unlikely ever to happen because it infringes on an existing green space and golf course, and if the latter should ever close--as many on-island courses unfortunately have over the decades--the green space would annex the property, hopefully adding pedestrian and bike paths.